A skeletal outline of the history of salvation can be found in the call to Abraham in Genesis 12:1–3. It ends with the promise that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” The fulfillment of that promise lay conspicuously fallow throughout the OT. Only in Jonah and Second Isaiah is the blessing to the Gentiles again taken up. In Isaiah 49:1–6 the servant is told, “it is too small a thing for you to … restore the tribes of Jacob.… I will make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” The early church saw that design supremely fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Salvation had come from the Jews (John 4:22), but it was not limited to them. “First for the Jew, then for the Gentile,” said Paul (1:16). In Paul’s day the final and oft-forgott…